A growing faction of MAGA world has soured on the Iran war. The polling is bad. The war is unpopular with independents. Gas is at $4 a gallon. An F-15 just got shot down. And the voices that helped put Trump back in the White House are getting louder in their complaints. But here is the thing about almost every single one of those complaints: they are carefully, deliberately constructed to avoid saying that Trump made a bad decision. Because in MAGA world, Trump is always a spectator to his own presidency. Everything that goes wrong was done to him, never by him.
What They’re Saying.
Tucker Carlson, in an interview with Piers Morgan, called the Iran war a "betrayal" of Trump's voters — a "heartbreak" for the people who elected him on promises of staying out of foreign entanglements. He said it was a betrayal "on the level that I don't think people who aren't in those groups can understand." What Tucker did not say: Trump launched the war. Trump gave the order. Trump is the commander in chief. The betrayal, if that's what it is, came from him.
Megyn Kelly, whose MAGA credentials are well established, asked on her show: "Now that it's not only going poorly, but the president's poll numbers are in a precipitous free fall, we'd love to see some accountability." Then she asked who "talked him into it" and whether the president was "fully briefed about the risks." As if Trump were a passive recipient of other people's decisions. As if he doesn't spend his mornings watching montages of explosions in Iran that aides reportedly prepare for him daily. As if the war was something that happened to him.
According to NBC News, Trump has been "mainlining minute-long video montages that feature the biggest and baddest US military strikes on Iran, a daily hype reel of 'stuff blowing up,'" according to a US official. That may help explain why Trump's assessment of how the war is going — "unbelievably well" — differs so wildly from everyone else's.
MTG Rebranded. Bannon Is Against It. The Realignment Is Real.
Marjorie Taylor Greene — once among the most performatively loyal members of Trump's MAGA base — has publicly broken with the president over the Iran war and other issues. She now calls herself "America First" rather than MAGA and is resigning from Congress early next year. Steve Bannon, Trump's former chief strategist and one of the architects of the MAGA political project, has come out against the war. Laura Ingraham, one of Trump's most reliable Fox News defenders, has wondered aloud on air whether Trump got good advice before launching.
They'll say it was Israel's fault. They'll say it was advisers who misled him. They'll say anything rather than say the thing that's true: Trump started a war he promised he wouldn't, and he owns it.
The Blame-Shifting Is the Tell.
Slate's analysis of the MAGA anti-war contingent nailed it: several critics are finding ways to place the bulk of the blame on Israel, on warmongering advisers who "ensorcelled" Trump, on anyone but Trump himself. Some have invoked antisemitic tropes about Israel manipulating American foreign policy. Others suggest Trump was deceived by people around him. The framing preserves MAGA's core belief — that Trump is uniquely good and never truly at fault — even as the war he launched is going badly by every available measure.
The problem with every version of this argument is that Donald Trump is the president of the United States. He gave the order. He has claimed credit for it enthusiastically for five weeks, repeatedly saying the war is going "unbelievably well" and that the US has "beaten and completely decimated Iran." He cannot simultaneously be the decisive commander taking credit for military strikes and also a passive victim of bad advice when things go wrong. He does not get both.
How We Got Here Is Also Worth Saying.
The "America First" wing of the GOP spent years arguing for non-interventionism — against foreign wars, against nation-building, against the kind of open-ended Middle East conflicts that defined the post-9/11 era. Trump ran on that platform in 2024. He won partly because of it. The people who voted for an end to foreign entanglements got a war with Iran instead — launched without congressional authorization, without a clear objective, without an exit strategy, and without their input. The anger in MAGA world about that is real. The refusal to locate it correctly — in the decisions of the man they elected — is both predictable and damning.
Sources
- Slate: Analysis of how MAGA critics of the Iran war are blaming Israel, advisers, and everyone but Trump — while treating him as a "spectator to his own presidency."
- RTE: Tucker Carlson calls the Iran war a "betrayal" of Trump's voters in Piers Morgan interview. Bannon against it. MTG rebranded as "America First."